Those Who Cannot Remember the Past: How Matter of Castro-Tum Ignores the Lessons of Matter of Avetisyan

Attorney General Jefferson B. Sessions III recently ruled in
Matter of Castro-Tum, 27 I&N Dec. 271 (A.G. 2018)
, that immigration judges cannot under most circumstances “administratively
close” cases before them (other than in a few instances where this is
specifically authorized by regulation or court-approved settlement), even
though the practice has been followed for many years. Administrative
closure had previously allowed immigration judges to avoid spending time on
cases that were awaiting action by another agency or were otherwise
lower-priority, but Attorney General Sessions has generally removed this
option. Instead, he has insisted that Immigration Judges must either
resolve cases before them promptly, or grant a continuance “for a fixed
period” where justified.
Matter of Castro-Tum
, 27 I&N Dec. at 289.

EB-5 Investment Voice is the only Podcast series that focuses on the
United States immigrant investor visa, EB-5 and foreign direct
investment. Mona Shah, Esq. welcomes guests from the industry,
including: Developers, Regional Center Operatives, Attorneys,
Legislators and Politicians.

The proposed EB-5 update is a compromise still in the works. In this
episode, Mona is joined by Ira Kurzban, Esq., who brings in a leading
litigation attorney’s perspective to the proposed legislation, to discuss
various important but overlooked issues. They also discuss the work Mr.
Kurzban and other pioneers are
...

The EB-5 program has been running for quite some time and EB-5 investors
have seen it all. They hear a lot of promises all over the board,
including, among others, money-back guarantees and job buffer assurance.
However, unless an investor does his/her own due diligence to ensure an
alignment of financial interests
...

EB-5 Investment Voice is the only Podcast series that focuses on the United
States immigrant investor visa, EB-5 and foreign direct investment. Mona
Shah, Esq. welcomes guests from the industry, including: Developers,
Regional Center
...

New USCIS Policy Places Certain Students and Exchange Visitors at Serious Risk of Being Barred from the United States

In
another attempt
to restrict legal immigration, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
(USCIS) announced a
policy change
to the way foreign students and exchange visitors accrue unlawful
presence—a legal term used to describe any time spent in the United States
after a foreign national’s period of authorized stay has ended.

In December 2016, the Administrative Appeals Office (“AAO”) of the U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (“USCIS”) issued Matter of Dhanasar (“Dhanasar”),
[1]
a precedent decision issuing a new standard for National Interest Waiver
(“NIW”) green card petitions for the first time in 18 years.

Typically, a petition in the employment-based second preference immigrant
visa category must be accompanied by a certified labor certification from
the U.S. Department of Labor. However, the law allows the labor
certification requirement to be waived if it is in the national interest.
[2]

Dhanasar
set forth the following guidelines for determining when it is in the
national interest to waive the labor certification requirement:

The foreign national’s proposed endeavor has both substantial merit and
national importance;

The foreign national is well positioned to advance the proposed
endeavor; and

On balance, it would benefit the United States to waive the
requirements of a job offer and thus of a labor certification.
[3]

In setting this framework, the AAO rescinded Matter of New York State Dep’t of Transportation, 22 I&N Dec.
215 (INS Acting Assoc. Comm’r 1998) (“NYSDOT”), which provided the
previous framework for adjudicating national interest waivers.

Part of the impetus of rescinding NYSDOT was that the adjudication
framework had “proven particularly ill-suited for USCIS to evaluate
petitions from self-employed individuals, such as entrepreneurs.”
[4]
In other words, part of the justification for promulgating Dhanasar was because NYSDOT failed to provide USCIS
adjudicators with a framework to approve NIW petitions for entrepreneurs.

Given that entrepreneur NIW adjudications constituted part of the impetus
for Dhanasar, this article seeks to assess how Dhanasar
has actually impacted
...

Latina/o Immigrants in the Racist Era of Trump

President Donald J. Trump represents an existential threat to immigrants in
the United States. More specifically, Trump’s immigration rhetoric and
policies consist of racist, xenophobic, enforcement-only and divisive
(i.e., “us-versus-them”) political positions. Moreover, Trump’s domestic
positions on immigration interconnect with his foreign diplomacy based on
isolationist and unilateralist policies. While former U.S. presidents
espoused (and implemented) similar anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies,
such as the
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
and the internment of an estimated 120,000 Japanese immigrants and citizens
during WW II, Trump, during his short presidency, aims to re-imagine or
re-invent the country’s dark past with his racist slogan, “Make America
Great Again”—which Trump originally claimed he coined. However, Trump
actually stole it from the late President Ronald Reagan. The
“Hustler-in-Chief”
lies so much, it must be difficult for him—along with his lackey apologists
and fellow liars, like John F. Kelly, Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Huckabee
Sanders, etc.—to keep track of all his lies. I just hope that the brave
comedian Michelle Wolf returns to the White House Correspondent's dinner,
so she can ridicule and rip into Kelly and Giuliani in same manner she
exposed Sander’s infinite lies
at this year’s memorable event
.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a policy
memorandum on May 10, 2018, “
Accrual of Unlawful Presence and F, J, and M Nonimmigrants
.” The memo abruptly revises previous policy guidance in the USCIS
Adjudicator’s Field Manual relating to this issue. The new guidance is
effective August 9, 2018, and after reading this blog, it is hoped that
readers are sufficiently shocked and motivated to submit
comments
as the radical departure from previous policy will jeopardize the ability
of many nonimmigrants, mainly foreign students, from returning to the
United States for unwitting or inadvertent status violations.

Warnings On Immigration Changes

One of the purposes of writing on immigration issues has been trying to get
others to see in order to improve immigration law for the sake of justice
and humanity. Unfortunately that does not seem to be happening now or in
the near future as the levers of power rest with a President, his
immigration cohorts (Attorney General Jeff Sessions and senior White House
advisor Stephen Miller), and a compliant Republican Party who blatantly
disregard the sweeping benefits of immigrants while scourging them by
anecdotal examples as deficits and threats to the nation. Anything that
does not comport with Mr. Trump’s anti-immigration views is swept under as
“fake news” even as he fails to read materials on presidential briefings
and instead spends his time watching “Fox and Friends”
...

Assembly Line Injustice: How the Implementation of Immigration Case Completion Quotas will Eviscerate Due Process

The Executive Office for Immigration Review, under the direction of the
Department of Justice, announced last year that it had reopened the
Collective Bargaining Agreement with the National Association of
Immigration Judges (NAIJ) to include case completion quotas in the
performance evaluations of Immigration Judges. On March 30, 2018, James
McHenry, the Director of the EOIR,
formally announced these metrics
, which require IJs to complete at least 700 cases per year, have a remand
rate of less than fifteen percent, and meet half of the additional
benchmarks listed in the evaluation plan, which can be found
here
. As pointed out by
the Association of the Bar of the City of New York
, “this quota translates into each judge hearing testimony and rendering
decisions almost three cases per day, five days per week, 52 weeks per
year.” According to several retired IJs and Former Board of Immigration
Appeals (BIA) Members, such quotas raise serious due process concerns and
will result in a system that is less focused on justice and appearing “
more like an assembly line
.”

There are a number of issues with the EOIR case completion quotas. First,
these quotas may force IJs to breach their ethical obligations.
Specifically, the new completion quotas are tied to the financial
incentives of IJs, where the performance evaluations affect IJs’ job
security and eligibility for raises. IJs are not given life appointments
and can be easily removed from the bench by the Attorney General if he
finds them to not be meeting these performance thresholds. Thus, IJs may be
encouraged to render hasty decisions in order to satisfy these case
completion
...